11
“You do knowthat your phone has been ringing?” Rose spoke softly.
Clarissa looked at her and then down at her favorite Hereu shoulder bag. She’d had the wits to recover it from the locked car, but all she could hear were more police sirens as they arrived to redirect the traffic disaster of Columbus Circle. Helos and jets flew overhead in constant patrol.
The four of them sat on a pair of benches by the Reflecting Pool in Union Square. Upside down in the still waters, the curve of the Capitol Dome glowed a bloody red. With the sun down, it shimmered with reflected firelight. Why couldn’t the jet have targeted there and taken out the House Intelligence Committee? Apparently that was too much to ask.
Across the water, that drunken sod Ulysses S. Grant sat atop his bronze horse, facing their direction as if he was on their side, too. His reputation had been mostly rehabilitated in the last twenty years but was still far from sterling.How many ghosts hid in your closet, Mr. President U. S. Grant? More than mine? Be glad thatyoudidn’t face the pre-election media circus of this day and age.
Her phone rang again, and this time she heard it.
Her mind must have determined the ringing to be no more relevant than all the rest of the noise immediately after the crash. The main thing she still heard in her mind was the full throttle roar of the C-20’s engines passing close overhead, then dopplering away until the Gulfstream had impacted the George—a sound she couldn’t recollect at all.
“Clarissa here.”
“Where thehellhave you been?” Not exactly the sort of thing she needed at the moment. Not even from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Drake Nason.
“Go fuck yourself, Drake.”
Rose looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Wouldn’t surprise her one bit. Their mutual animosity went far deeper than the usual military versus clandestine services hatred. Drake had blocked so many of her initiatives and plans that…
“You can do that some other time, Drake,” President Roy Cole spoke up, cutting off Drake’s retort.
She was on speakerphone to the White House. Perfect. At least she now had the comfort of knowing that today had no more depths to plumb on the fast slide from bad to worst.
“I’m at the site of the attack.”
“What are you doing in the South China Sea?”
“What? I’m in Union Square, looking at that ass Ulysses S. Grant. Being interviewed by the AIB because I was witness to the attack.”
“Attack? What attack? All we know about is an errant jet that—”
“Errant jet?”Clarissa pulled away the phone to stare at it. This was too unreal. She tried to answer but nothing came out of her mouth. She’d almost died in the last half hour and…
Taz was holding out her hand for the phone.
Unwilling to trust the woman with her phone but still unable to find any words, Clarissa set it to speaker.
Only after she did so did she think to check the immediate vicinity. Union Square itself was empty. The few who might have lingered in the pleasant evening had all gone to gawk at the disaster. The Capitol Building’s steps were lined with more of them.
Their small group sat in an oddly still vacuum, a block from where the city had been attacked.
“Colonel Taz Cortez here, Mr. President. Jeremy Trahn and I are presently investigating the crash of a US Air Force C-20C Gulfstream III into the George Hotel… Yes, the one off Columbus Circle. Director Reese believes that this was a deliberate attack, most likely targeting Senator Hunter Ramson. His wife, Rose, is with us and concurs that he was probably in a suite at the point of impact. The other possible—”
Clarissa waved a hand to cut her off. That she herself might have been the target was best left out of this conversation. That would start too many questions about why she’d think such a thing.
Taz smirked at her, clearly indicating that Clarissa was the who shewishedhad been in that room.
“One of ours? A suicide pilot in an Air Force jet?” Rick Danziger’s deep voice, the Head of the President’s Protection Detail, sounded over the phone.
“Based on the flight path identified by Director Reese—” Taz began.
“It was deliberate, Mr. President.” Time for Clarissa to take back this conversation.
There was a loud noise in the background, then Danziger declared, “We’re crashing the White House. Mr. President, please come with me.”Crashing the White House.No one in or out. Full security lockdown.
Roy Cole managed to say, “We’ll call you back from—” before his Secret Service detail rushed him out of the room to the PEOC. The President’s Emergency Operations Center was deep under West Executive Avenue and was far safer than either the Oval or the Situation Room.